Abstract

Friday, September 2, 2016

High aspirations

In a recent article in New
York magazine, journalist Benjamin Wallace described a new kind of
aspiration to immortality, one achieved through the pharmaceutical
breakthroughs in the years since the human genome project was fully mapped in
2003. The article focuses on Leonard Guarente, a biologist who directs MIT’s
AgeLab and cofounded Elysium Health, and is a strong proponent of the notion
that longevity, through science, could stretch a good deal farther than most
people assume. As described in Wallace’s article, Elysium Health has developed
a “daily health product designed to optimize support for your most critical
metabolic systems.” The claims include helping people with several chronic
diseases, including Alzheimer’s. As Wallace put it, the Elysium brand “began
pummeling my awareness for weeks, the ads barreling into my Facebook feed with
claims of being the world’s first cellular health product.” “Cellular” suggests
that the proposed therapy would work at the level of individual cells, rather
than in the brain only.

What is
particularly noteworthy is that the company bypassed the Food and Drug
Administration, “effectively using its customers as human test subjects,
sometimes reviewing their FitBit and other health-tracking data to determine if
the pill delivers on its promise—or causes unexpected problems.” Wallace
himself took part in the trials. “If I were going to trust anyone in a lab coat
promising a magic pill to stay healthy longer, Guarente appeared to be a good
bet. As the month’s end drew near, I was reluctant to stop taking Basis,” the
drug in question. “But what promise!” Wallace exclaimed, predicting that in the
next five to ten years, today’s research will bear fruit. He noted that while
people won’t necessarily live longer, they might live better, suffering fewer of
the consequences of aging.

Last
fall I attended a forum on aging, and the figures cited on longevity were
similar to what Wallace describes—the world’s oldest woman, who died at 123,
was highlighted. Also noted was that babies being born last year are expected,
on average, to live over 100. But the speakers had little to say about how
degraded our planet will have become, if current environmental trends continue.

This
led me to reflect on two works of the imagination, one a movie from 1973 starring
Charlton Heston, Soylent Green. The fictional year is 2022. The
authorities keep a tight lid on rioting, and most of the population is
miserable in their global-warming-run-amok climate. More relevant is the recently
published book by Don DeLillo, one of the most critically acclaimed novelists
of the past three decades. To read DeLillo at his best—and his new novel, Zero
K, is one of his best—is to perceive reality as it might be just around the
corner. The cryonics business—the dream of suspended animation—is flourishing
in out-of-the-way places. This is not science fiction; better to think of it as
a preview of the near future. In this book, DeLillo’s obsidian-sharp prose is
at its best. A key plot point, which I won’t divulge, floored me. And DeLillo
is the only writer who could have pulled it off.